… Senior Malware Researcher at Kaspersky Lab, Roman Unuchek, has examined how a number of fitness wristbands interact with a smartphone, and discovered some surprising results.

According to his research, the authentication method in several popular fitness wearables allows a third party app to connect invisibly to the device, execute commands, and, in some cases, extract data from the device. In the devices investigated by the Kaspersky Lab researcher, such data was limited to the amount of steps taken by the user during the previous hour. However, next-generation fitness bands will be capable of collecting a greater volume of more varied data, significantly increasing the risk of sensitive medical data about the user leaking out.